METHOD

by Kate Stewart

  INT:

  Richard pulls up in an old Camino where Sisco waits outside an abandoned warehouse.

  Richard

  (Rounds the car, flicking a cigarette at Sisco’s chest and pulls his gun pointing it at Sisco)

  Where’s the fucking money?

  Sisco

  (pats his pockets and shrugs with a smug smile)

  I don’t seem to have it here.

  Richard

  (Leans in suspiciously and presses the gun to Sisco’s temple)

  This is about her again? Fuck, Sisco, you were never going to see this through, were you? Leave it to you to make your one grand stand about pussy.

  Sisco

  (Presses his head against the gun to urge Richard to shoot)

  You can have the fucking girl, but you’ll never see a dime of the money. Do it.

  Richard

  You have got to be shitting me. She came onto me, man.

  Sisco

  Don’t bother. It’s all over.

  Richard

  It’s not my fault your bride couldn’t keep her fucking hands to herself.

  Two gunshots sound. Sisco falls to the ground.

  Richard

  (looks at the shooter who stands behind Sisco’s lifeless body)

  What the fuck did you do?

  I’m unimpressed as I read on for a few more pages already knowing Lucas is going to pass.

  “What do you think?” he says, looking down to me.

  “You know it’s crap. I can’t believe you entertained it this long.”

  He gives me his first genuine smile in days and tosses the script to the floor. “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. It has decent bones. Somebody worked their ass off on that script.”

  He flips me so I’m pinned beneath him.

  “I know you’re looking to switch things up,” I say breathlessly as he pulls one of my nipples into his mouth. “But that’s not the one.”

  “Find me a script then, Mrs. Walker,” he orders, before sinking between my thighs and pressing his cock an inch inside me.

  “I’m so sore,” I plead as he eyes me, weighing my protest. I never deny him, I never want to, even when we’re fighting.

  Lucas dips his head, warm breath hits before eager lips trail over my skin. I grip his firm ass and drag him inside of me letting out a whimper. He stills, pulling back to peer down at me.

  “I missed you,” I say because that’s all I can voice. It’s the worst possible time to ask him how he’s feeling. I know he’s avoiding it, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll let him. I’m not the type to skirt around anything important and he knows that about me. He rears back and presses in hard, rolling his hips and lighting me up. My body pimples with gooseflesh and I hook my ankles around his back.

  “No matter how many times I fuck you,” he grits out, building his pace, “I need more.”

  Moaning in response, I meet his thrusts knowing full well I’ll be in pain for the next few days. He’s got the cock to match his smirk, but it’s never been a problem for us. Before I met Lucas, I’d always been a fan of men who knew what they wanted, and because of that, I’m definitely a fan of my husband. Tracing his etched chest with my fingernails, I stare up at him as he gazes down at me with lust-filled eyes. It’s always the particular way he looks at me that gets me, like he’s constantly conveying possession. It’s as if I’m the thing he’s wanted most in the world and he’s found it. My answering stare relays the same greed. I’m just short of being obsessed with my own husband.

  He works me thoroughly, biting the shell of my ear as I come around him. Convulsing with pleasure I loosen my grip, my thighs falling open, and he dives, thrusting like a madman, skin on skin the only sound in the room. Lucas doesn’t stop until he’s covered in effort, his skin glistening when he pulls out and covers my stomach with his release, fisting himself until sated. I watch enthralled while his body draws tight and then relaxes before he falls to my side on his stomach.

  Tracing lazy circles on his shoulder, I lean over and press a kiss to his bicep.

  “Talk to me. Tell me.”

  He’s already shaking his head buried in a pillow. “Tell you what? It hurts? That I’m pissed off? That I’m trying not to think about it right now?”

  Leaning over, I nod into his shoulder.

  “It hurts. I’m pissed off. I’m trying not to think about it right now.”

  “I don’t want to fight.”

  “Good,” he replies, still catching his breath, “then let’s not fight.”

  He moves to get up, and I pin him down with my bare sex on his back straddling his waist.

  “No.”

  “This is oddly arousing,” he jokes, while I remain tight-lipped.

  He exhales a weary breath. “Dame, don’t. I just can’t put words to it yet.”

  Seconds tick past before I concede. “Okay,” I say moving off him to stand next to the bed.

  Still on his stomach, he tosses a confused look over his shoulder and reads my posture.

  “Don’t treat me differently,” he warns.

  I guffaw while crossing my arms. “You want me to push you about something you don’t want to talk about?”

  “No, I don’t want you to walk around on eggshells, you’ve been doing it since we got the call.”

  “So now you’re going to tell me how to handle you?” I ask incredulously. “You must want to fight.”

  “You have cum running down your stomach,” he says, nodding toward my body. “I can’t take you seriously.”

  My nostrils flare a little at the demeaning remark, and his lips upturn when he sees my aggravation. He pushes to his knees and steps off the bed.

  “Yep, you do, you want to fight. So, let’s fight,” I say, following him into the bathroom. He sighs when he realizes he’s not getting out of the conversation, so I start. “He left because he was in pain.”

  “He killed himself because he was a narcissistic asshole.”

  “No, that’s you being an asshole. You calling him a narcissistic asshole makes you selfish.”

  “He was selfish.”

  “It was a selfish decision,” I argue as he twists the nozzle to start our shower.

  Lucas gives me a look of warning I ignore.

  “Babe, I’m no authority on Blake but—”

  “You’re right, you’re not,” he snaps, his cold stare chilling me as he pulls me into the shower and the heads spray out in all directions soaking us in seconds. His eyes roam my body, and it shudders in appreciation despite the rising tension. His next words stun me. “I should have come inside you, it’s time for a baby.”

  “That’s a mutual decision, one you can’t make on impulse because your friend dies.”

  “Fuck,” he slaps the tile next to my head. His eyes fix on the drain between us, and all I see etched all over his beautiful face is pain.

  “I love you, but you can’t disappear on me. That’s not how we work.”

  “I know.”

  “You started it this way,” I remind him.

  “I know, baby, I know,” he replies, already a world away.

  “You’re putting distance between us now,” I point out.

  Accusation dances in his eyes as they snap to mine. “Maybe because I want to think the way I want to, not the way you think I should.”

  Swallowing, I take a step back. “That’s why you went quiet on me?”

  Guilt mars his features, but his words slice. “Some of it. I don’t need you to police me on what to think or how to feel.”

  Armoring up, I try to reason with my anger. “I don’t—” I stop myself mid-sentence because he’s right. I’m twisting his feelings into some sort of quest to make him see what happened was Blake’s choice. It’s all wrong. Still, I’m cut. His words hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I offer with a sigh. “You’re right. Say what you want to say.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t need any more guilt right now.”

  “Toug
h shit, you don’t get to take that back,” I reply with a little bite as I pour soap on a soft loofah and begin to scrub myself. I have no doubt this shower is going to be cut short by one of our tempers, so I do what I can to stop it.

  “Be honest with me, or we’ve got nothing.” He stares down at me wordless, and I can see so much of what he’s not saying. He blames himself, and I’ve cornered him into discussing something he’s not ready to talk about. I have to give him the space to sort it out, but I’m not letting it go.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t fight,” I murmur. “I don’t know how to help.”

  His low whisper twists the knife. “You can’t help. Blake’s dead.”

  It’s final. That’s the hardest part for him, maybe for us both. There’s no solution, only finality.

  “My dad told me, ‘It takes fifteen years to be an overnight success,’ and it took me seventeen and a half years.”—Adrien Brody

  Lucas

  “I can’t do this shit anymore,” Blake says, hauling in a bus tray full of dirty glasses. “I’m done after tonight.”

  “It could be worse,” I say, wiping the sweat off my chest with a bar towel, “we could be passing out flyers in a chicken suit.”

  He frowns. “Who did that?”

  “Brad Pitt.” I pull bottles for yet another specialty cocktail. “I read it in an autobiography, I think.”

  He glances around the club full of drugged up and flamboyantly dressed men. “That sounds more appealing at the moment. I’ll take the fucking chicken suit.”

  “The tips are better here, and you know it,” I say, lining up martini glasses.

  He tosses the soiled dishes into the waiting soap-sink beneath the counter and raises a sarcastic brow in my direction. “Tell you what, why don’t you deliver Enrique’s ‘special’ order next time.” The regulars have a hard-on for Blake. He’s the light to my dark with curly blond hair cropped close to his head and deceptive doe eyes.

  I shrug with a grin. “Hey, it’s the price you pay for real estate, pretty boy. We have to be close for auditions. You can’t afford to quit.” We’ve already been kicked out of two apartments in the last six months, always short on rent due to skipping work for last-minute auditions. It was how we met. I’d come home blitzed one night and decided to sleep it off outside my sealed front door brandished with an eviction notice. Blake had woken me when he came in from his own party and offered me his couch to crash on. Before that night, we’d been friendly in passing, but the next morning we’d gotten to know each other better through a nasty hangover. He even helped sweet-talk the landlord into letting me get my shit out of my apartment which now consisted of a duffle bag ready to move on a moment’s notice. We had little in common aside from acting aspirations, but even in his state, he was steps ahead of me.

  Blake was a child star for fifteen minutes. He’s been typecast and unable to get many acting gigs since. I had yet to get my first real break, only scoring a few commercials with no lines in the last year. We were at the age where we were just young enough to land heartthrob teen or troubled son roles, but those were often passed out to those with a better portfolio. Our looks only gave us so much of an edge. And our headshots were shit. We’d let one of our regulars rip us off for a couple hundred dollars each only to get back underdeveloped photos on sandpaper to pass out to casting directors. Neither of us could afford to do better. We were both living hand-to-mouth and most of the time counted on the hospitality of the girls we bedded to get our next meal. We were literally fucking for food at this point, but just assholes enough to not let commitment deter our singular focus. I’d practically been a virgin when I got to Los Angeles and had spent the last couple of months making up for lost time.

  In an act of desperation, Blake and I applied for and got hired to bartend at a dive aptly called Queens just off the strip even though we had no experience and were just on the other side of eighteen. Not that we had to fill out anything other than our jeans to get the job. The nights were long, but the work was easy and the tips we got in exchange for a shirtless few hours of objectification were worth it. Blake was uncomfortable with the attention, as hetero as they come, while I played nicer due to higher tolerance.

  Blake glares openly as a few guys saunter up to the bar with upturned lips. Anyone with gaydar could see Blake was straight as an arrow, but it seems to be the new pastime of the patrons to flirt with the unavailable bartender. Blake is tested daily when our boss’s boyfriend, Enrique, orders his cocktails up to VIP with a special request that he be the one to deliver them. Blake is fire though, in mind-set and temperament, and I know it’s only a matter of time before he costs us the job.

  It’s a little sad how formulaic we are in our circumstances. I’m the ‘runaway fresh off the bus’ to join the Hollywood circus, and Blake is already considered ‘washed up’ due to his role as a little brother in a sitcom, Buzzed, that ran one season. I had read far too many autobiographies to know that nothing happens overnight. Not even the overnight successes. Blake has very few connections since his falling out with his agent mother who took every dime of his momentary childhood wealth. He didn’t even have to get emancipation to free himself. When Blake turned into nothing more than a temporary cash-cow, his mother left him to his own devices. In his words, he thinks she’s still unaware he left her a year ago to hole up with his then-girlfriend. Blake’s still pissed off about it and determined to prove her wrong. At least that’s what he tells me when he’s drunk enough to shed some story.

  For me, the grass is always going to be greener when you grow up in a trailer in Shitville, West Virginia, where my parents will die fucking, fighting, and festering in the filthy life they’ve made. As far as our relationship is concerned, I have no plans to ever visit for the holidays. I don’t play the victim. Their ignorance is incurable. As much as they lacked in work ethic, I make up for. I refuse the life I was born into. It won’t be mine. So if I have to cash in on the looks I was given and serve a few guys who are vying for a peek at my cock to pay the bills, so be it. My tolerance stems from survival instinct. I’ve been taking care of myself my whole life. Blake fled from a far more opulent lifestyle. I sometimes think he regrets leaving home though he would never admit it. His hate for his mother stems deep.

  As if he’s reading my thoughts, he twists his lips up and nods. “We’re going to land something, man.”

  “Damn right we are. We just have to get the dues part over with. This job is a joke, it isn’t reality. Just a test. Don’t take it so seriously.”

  “Right,” he says, nodding repeatedly. “But it gets better.” I can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement, so I stay mute. The fact that he has a taste of the business but needs so much reassurance should scare me, but I’ve been in far worse situations than prancing around half naked for tips.

  My only consolation for my shitty childhood circumstances was that a few trailers over, an old starlet by the name of Maddie—Madelyn Rosera Darling—used to babysit for my mother and taught me the art of cinema through the retelling of her heyday as an A-lister. Maddie is the one who set my future in motion. I didn’t know it then, but I’m appreciative now. She was the reason for my obsession. The one who planted the seed the first time she sat me down on her ancient sofa surrounded by a stack of reels and showed me her first movie.

  “It gets better,” Blake repeated more for himself than to me as I loaded Enrique’s cocktail on his tray.

  It only truly got better for one of us, for me.

  I just didn’t realize the same path we traveled together, we got to from different directions. I was too busy burning takes while he was fighting the demons he created to keep up. I should have known. I should have seen him fading, but I was blazing too bright. I, like everyone else who mattered to Blake, left him behind in a trail of stardust.

  Staring out at the turbulent ocean, I row in my machine for the second time that day. I’ve been overdoing it since Blake’s funeral. Speculation is front and center on every ne
ws station as to “why.” They’ve dug deep, highlighting his worst behavior, his patterns with the women in his life with a heavy concentration on ancient addictions. When we were younger, his favorite drug was whatever brought a good time or numbed him from defeat, but my fear is that there won’t be a trace of anything in his system once the autopsy report comes out. And with that, there will be no way to justify he wasn’t thinking clearly. Everything in my chest constricts at the conviction he was sober. And the idea that he was agonizingly present in his final minutes makes it that much harder. I could be asking the typical questions, but I know the answers.

  Why didn’t he reach out to me?

  Because I was unreachable.

  Why didn’t I know he was depressed?

  Because I didn’t ask.

  The ugly truth is, we’d been on a different playing field for the last couple of years. Blake claimed he was doing no-budget independent films to help his creative flow—which is the standard excuse when no one wants to hire you—while I made blockbusters and cashed in. He was no longer invited to the parties, a self-made social pariah. More often than not, when Blake walked into the room, people fled from his conversation often wary and afraid of his temperament or what socializing with him could imply. People were cleaning their noses up, while Blake kept his full of debris. He’d been in the headlines more and more in the last few years for his behavior—possession of marijuana over the legal amount, public intoxication, and petty theft—which had to be bullshit.